Jet Hunt Shifts as Findings Hint at Longer Flight

WASHINGTON — Investigators are examining data that appear to show that the missing Malaysia Airlines jetliner was still in automated communication with satellite systems, and may therefore still have been airborne or at least functional, for hours after ground controllers last heard from it, a well-placed official involved in the investigation said on Thursday.

The information added to a growing belief that the jet turned off course after contact was lost and could have traveled hundreds of miles west, across the Malaysian peninsula and out into the Indian Ocean. Some search efforts were redirected to those waters on Thursday, with the redeployment of American naval aircraft and an American destroyer, the Kidd.

Revelations that the aircraft continued to communicate with satellites long after contact with air traffic controllers ceased added to a swirl of new information and speculation about its fate. ABC News reported on Thursday evening that American officials believed that two communications systems aboard the aircraft shut down at separate times, suggesting they were turned off deliberately rather than as a result of a catastrophic failure. The ABC report, which quoted two unidentified officials, could not be immediately corroborated.

Data captured before the aircraft’s communications systems ceased to function appeared to reflect regular attempts by equipment on the plane to establish a link with a satellite. Such a link would be used to transmit routine maintenance data about the plane, if the airline operating it subscribed to that service.

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Prayers were offered at Kuala Lumpur International Airport for those aboard Flight 370, whose disappearance is one of the biggest aviation mysteries in decades.CreditWong Maye-E/Associated Press

The attempts continued periodically for a considerable time after the plane’s transponder, which identifies it to ground control radar, stopped functioning 40 minutes into the flight, the investigator said, but electronics experts have not yet established exactly how long. It was not clear how much information could be gleaned from the satellite communications, beyond the length of time the contacts persisted.

The new evidence suggesting that the plane kept flying for hours was first reported by The Wall Street Journal. Malaysian officials denied on Thursday that any data was received from the aircraft after contact with ground controllers was lost.

Radar blips detected by the Malaysian military also strongly suggest that an unidentified aircraft — most likely the missing jet — remained airborne after Flight 370, with 239 people on board, ceased communications with air traffic controllers. The radar showed the aircraft crossing the peninsula from east to west near the Malaysia-Thailand border and flying out over the Strait of Malacca.

Military radar last recorded the plane 200 miles northwest of Penang, Malaysia, flying at 29,500 feet, officials said. They said the data was being shared with the United States and China to help determine whether the aircraft was Flight 370.

The search area being combed by dozens of ships and planes was expanded Thursday to take in parts of the Andaman Sea, the arm of the Indian Ocean northwest of the strait, and may grow further. Jay Carney, the White House press secretary, said on Thursday, “Based on some new information that’s not necessarily conclusive, but new information, an additional search area may be opened in the Indian Ocean, and we are consulting with international partners about the appropriate assets to deploy.”

The Pentagon said that the Kidd would search in the Andaman Sea at the request of the Malaysian government, and that a P-3 surveillance plane had already flown over the area. By late Thursday, the Kidd was expected to expand its search area into the Indian Ocean after arriving in the area on Friday. Syed Akbaruddin, the spokesman for India’s External Affairs Ministry, said India had also sent three ships, two airplanes and a helicopter to search in that area.

The plane, a Boeing 777, was bound for Beijing and had fuel on board to fly at least 2,500 miles. Contact was lost 40 minutes into the flight, when the plane was on course, heading northeast from Kuala Lumpur over the Gulf of Thailand toward Vietnamese airspace, and the hunt initially concentrated on those waters to the east of the Malaysian peninsula.

Days of intensive searching there produced nothing but false leads and floating debris that turned out to be unrelated to the aircraft. Still, Malaysia’s defense minister, Hishammuddin Hussein, said on Thursday that the main search effort would continue in that area.

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More information on the search for the Malaysian jetliner on the Minute including the United States' silent role in the investigation and withering criticism of Malaysia's political elite.CreditCreditSingapore Navy/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Pentagon officials said that several American agencies were reviewing the radar blips recorded by the Malaysian military, but had not yet found anything that would indicate specifically where the missing plane might have gone. A senior Pentagon official said that Malaysian and American authorities were “looking pretty closely” at the possibility that the plane went down in the Indian Ocean, but had not reached any conclusions.

Malaysian officials who briefed reporters on Thursday denied the initial report from The Wall Street Journal that the aircraft had continued to transmit technical data about the status of its engines after 1:30 a.m. on Saturday, the approximate time when the pilots last spoke to ground controllers by radio.

The chief executive of Malaysia Airlines, Ahmad Jauhari Yahya, said the last data received from Flight 370 came at 1:07 a.m. on Saturday and gave no indication of trouble with the plane.

“That was the last transmission,” Mr. Ahmad Jauhari said at the news conference, held in Sepang, where the international airport serving Kuala Lumpur is. “It did not run beyond that.”

The Journal later corrected its report to say satellite contacts, not transmission of technical data, had continued for hours.

“The positive takeaway is that the system had to be powered to try to establish the connection,” Robert W. Mann Jr., an aviation consultant in Port Washington, N.Y., said in an interview.

The fact that satellite contacts continued does not necessarily mean that the plane continued to fly, Mr. Mann said. If the system had a backup battery, he said, it could have kept trying to transmit after the jet had landed somewhere, and in certain circumstances even after a crash.

The Malaysian authorities said separately on Thursday that nothing had come of images recorded by Chinese satellites on Sunday and posted online on Wednesday, which appeared to show large objects floating in the South China Sea. Aircraft and ships sent to the area found nothing, they said.

The government also denied Malaysian news reports that the police had searched the house of the missing flight’s pilot.

The authorities said the country’s air force took no immediate action on Saturday to investigate the unidentified radar blips, and only later realized their significance. Mr. Hishammuddin, who is also the country’s acting transport minister, said Malaysia had asked neighboring countries, including India, for any radar data they might have that could help establish what became of the unidentified aircraft seen on Malaysian military screens.